There seems little I can add to this at the moment; I suspect this story will now move on to the suppliers, which is where the accountability seems to lie.

I would like to thank everyone for being so patient and so calm at the end of last week. What came to light is truly astonishing and I am grateful to Westminster for being proactive in testing their contractor’s products and then acting quickly and decisively to remove meat from the menu.

What was easy to miss last week was that the tests showed cross contamination of at least two different meat products and that many Westminster schools were affected. 18 schools were supplied with the contaminated halal sausages and 17 with the contaminated beef mince. We were the focus of the press coverage because the sampled sausage came from our school.

Apologies for bombarding you with copies of the letter from Westminster on Friday (some of you will have received a copy by email, a copy on arrival in the playground and a copy at the end of the day) but we wanted to be as certain as we could be that everyone was kept in the loop.

I will do my best to keep you informed of any developments in this story; we still need to know how the cross-contamination occurred (as an 8 year child asked me on Friday: “why is pork DNA in a halal sausage?”- an 8 year old can ask the key question, but the adults can’t supply the answer at the moment). Where is the accountability for what happened? And what measures will be put in place to ensure that when beef is on the menu, it’s actually beef; if it says halal, it’s halal. Is that really too much to expect?